To SSD or not to SSD?

Share This article

Testing

Because I don’t have equivalent models of either the hard drive or the SSD in the office, I couldn’t test them to compare that SSD’s speed to its price premium. But I did have a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 (which sells on Newegg for $189.99) and a 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP ($229.99 on Newegg) on hand. Storage space on the former runs about $1.58 per gigabyte, whereas on the latter it’s about $0.12 per gigabyte; all told, space on the Vertex 3 is almost 13.8 times more expensive than space on the Seagate. But both drives run on SATA III, and I know them to be fast, so I ran them through some quick tests on CrystalDiskMark (CDM) to see if the SSD earned its price.

OCZ Vertex 3 (left) vs. Seagate Barracuda (right)

On CDM’s 512KB read test, the Vertex 3 was 10.1 times faster than the Seagate. But on the 512KB write test and the sequential read and write tests, the margins were much thinner. (At sequential writes, the Vertex 3 was barely 1.25 times faster, for example.) In fairness, the Vertex 3 turned out astoundingly high 4KB scores, both straight up and with a queue depth of 32, but half the app’s tests show you’re just not getting your money’s worth in every situation.

This does not mean that I think SSDs are always a bad deal. My polarity on the issue flips above the $1,000 mark. For true-blue enthusiasts and dedicated speed hounds, an SSD is smart because the other components have been maximized and balanced to such an extent that read and write rates may become a limiting factor. If you’re spending that much money on components, you have every reason to expect — and probably even need — that speed, and there’s no way to get it without an SSD. You don’t need to buy a super-expensive one, either, to reap enormous benefits, though no SSD is ever “cheap.” And, to address the second question we initially asked, 120GB is a fine floor as far as capacity — any serious computer worth his salt (including me) can make that work, and any larger drive within his or her budget is gravy. So when you’re devoting the money, the energy, and the enthusiasm to building a machine geared toward high power rather than low price, I’m the first person to say, “Bring on the SSD!”

But as with everything else, you have to be smart about it. A 30GB SSD may be fast for everyone, but it’s not a smart use of money — or an allocation of space — for most anyone constructing a lower-end system. Tweaking your parts list to boost the speed elsewhere, and building out available storage space using (Thailand flooding or no) less-expensive hard drives, even if they’re on the slower side, gives you a lot more blast for your buck. Yes, you’ll be giving up the lightning-zooming efficiency that SSDs bring so sexily to the table. But your photo, music, and video collections, and most important your bank account, will thank you for that minimal sacrifice.

Tagged In

Post a Comment

http://blog.az-tek.co.uk/ Peter Green

Have to say I agree here – I just couldn’t justify the cost of an SSD, despite my ideal storage upgrade being a 128GB SSD,(GBP 150.00), and a 1-2TB HDD. Eventually, once my PC ran out of space, I just bought a new Seagate HDD and I was very impressed!

I blogged about my experience: http://blog.az-tek.co.uk/2011/09/hdd-upgrade.html

Roberto Tomás

I kinda go the other way around. Skip the 30gb SSD, and go straight to the 120gb model. Lose the headache.

Most everyone, even my grandmother now, has old hard drives lying around from previous builds. Hook them up to a nice usb enclosure, and start treating mass storage the same way you treat monitors — once every 10+ years you buy a new one.

http://twitter.com/futurestorage futurestorage

The 30GB SSD is not really targeted at what you are using it for. It’s for the PCs out there that do only 1 or 2 things – maybe browse the web or in an industrial use where speed, anti vibration, noise is a key factor.

The 60GB drive (or 64GB) is aimed as the entry level for the consumer. This is down to under $100 which is affordable for most people (as part of a PC build cost).

The longevity scare really is not an issue – sure you’ve heard that some have failed – but I would say that virtually none were due to wearing out, rather that they failed as any other piece of hardware fails (that is made by humans).

Good article though – some good points.

ecoshift (at)gmail

my 2 cents:
I found a 30gb ssd drive (coupled with a passport type usb drive for media etc.) to be quite effective hosting Ubuntu or Win7 on a netbook. A noticeable difference in speed for a basic, inexpensive, note-taking, email-checking, movie-watching, music-listening, web-surfing machine. Lasts all day on a single charge.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=24404294 Joe Peters

SSD is the way to go. Hands down. Buy an external for mass storage/backup.

Matt McMurter

I think you need to think of SSDs not in terms of storage but in terms of performance upgrades. A SSD is easily the biggest bang for your buck upgrade you can do. Often it has a much more noticeable impact on lower end PCs than it does on higher end PCs as it allows the processor to spend more time on things other than read / writing to disk. Many hardware vendors realize this and put SSDs into netbooks and other hardware compromised offerings… core 2 duo apple products I’m looking at you.

In terms of longevity, many of the firmware / controller glitches that plagued SSDs originally have long been worked out, leaving only the debate between lots of moving parts (standard HDD) and no moving parts (SSD)… I know what one I would go for.

The only valid argument made here is on the price per GB front. If you want to store any sort of media on your PC you are going to need to have a HDD. Obviously, the person who built your PC realized this and gave you a storage drive for your needs… a little up front planning on your part setting up your libraries on you’re TB disk and looking for install location prompts when installing your games /apps and your 75GB would be more than adequate.

I will never own another PC without an SSD. They make that much of a difference.

Anonymous

A 30GB SDD is meant to be used with a Z68 motherboard’s “Smart Response Technology”…

Basically, you use it to cache oft-used data for your slower, cheaper HDD, so you get the best of both worlds…

It is most definitely NOT meant to be used as a storage drive, lol.

Anonymous

I currently have a 100gb ssd. It’s a patriot inferno I picked up for 94 dollars although slightly used. Atm, it’s got 65 gb free. I have a raid 0 configuration of a wd caviar black and blue which is more than adequate (imo) for games, internet, etc. The only programs on the ssd are the things which I forgot to not install such as avg, or office. The only thing I care about launching fast is word; and to me, and most people

It’s the boot and shut-down times that really matter. I touched on this before, having a computer that starts up and shuts down in under a minute combined and is usable almost from the get-go is the one thing that makes using a computer “fun”. Applications be damned. a 30gig drive is perfect for someone just running xp or a simple 32 bit version of win 7. A simple drive letter change as well as moving the desktop etc to the other drive makes everything a breeze.

Atm, because of the 200 or more %+ increase in prices I couldn’t say but before, when you could grab a 500 or 750 gig hdd plus a 30 gig ssd for under a $100 it was perfect. Z68 makes it even better, but as I have no experience with this; no comment (p67 FTW :P)

James Stevens

Have you “not” heard of the OCZ Synapse Cache SSD? Dataplex cache software…?
Boot drives are a thing of the past, ya might want to check out some of the reviews for caching products – far more efficient in terms of $’s and performance than any boot drive setup, single hdd, or single ssd

James Stevens

…and no, despite the marketing fud, Seagatey Hybrids (momentus xt) do not deliver anywhere near the performance of cache SSD configs – just do the benchmarks yourself…

Bill Egge

For HD based computers – I usually create a 50GB partition for the OS and programs and that has left me with about 50% free space. So I can see 30GB getting by.

On another side, I am a software developer and I create separate development environments in VM’s for each client. My setup is a 30GB OS and programs drive and a second drive to hold source code and zip files etc – usually just 8GB or less. I run 3 clients on a 120GB vertex 2 SSD with 11GB free space. My most heavily used OS is a 27GB OS drive with 6.42GB free. I have been in this setup for a year.

Peter Wouldes

After having built a system with a i5-2500k, a z68 chipset and an older slow Blue series WD HDD I was surprised how slow the system was. I added in an OCZ 64GB SSD in cache mode and now the system blows me away. It went from a cold boot time of around 1:30 – 2:00 to about 15 seconds. I do not have to worry about moving stuff around from SSD to HDD as it only caches what it uses. I definitely recommend it to those pondering doing it if there is not the money for a big SSD.

I would just like to ask all these SSD lovers just one question: What happens when it blanks out. When I say “blank” I mean just that. There is NO data recovery possible as they can’t be fixed. Just zip, gone, and everything on it. If you can’t wait 1:30 for a cold boot, obviously you haven’t been in computers very long. That is bliss for those of us present at the dawn of the age. I’m a system builder and have only had one hard drive go bad after almost a decade and a half. And at that, I was able to freeze it long enough to off load the data. Contrast that to my very first SSD and it failed. I’ll NEVER have another no matter how many of you say the problems are now fixed. Even if the odds of failure are one in a million, if you’re that million, the odds are 100%. And, the people who say the problems are fixed, are probably the very same people who call it’s MTBF 100,000 years. All folly and dreaming. I can’t have folly and dreaming for a mission critical computer. Sorry…

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PSIXEAKIWYU4PJTGVWYNFNEIS4 P.I. Staker

Data recovery on HDD are not 100% guaranteed, so if you don’t do backups the risk is the same as if you had a SSD. Remember what your mama told ya: It’s not a matter of IF they fail, but WHEN they fail.

In my current setup, I have Windows and applications on my SSD, but all other data are on internal / external HDD. If my SSD goes, do a quick image, and I am running again in a couple hours.

Dennis Reiley

How big is a variable, but a minimum size would allow storage of all saved files. Software can always be installed on a new hard drive. But the backup of critical files is the greatest need for an SSD. Eliminating the need for a separate backup would be a godsend. In fact, incorporating an every five minute auto-save feature in every SSD would force me to purchase one large enough for all my saved files.

Speed accessing data will always be a distant second to protecting data when it comes to SSD’s.

Anonymous

TBH…with the way HD prices are, you are way better off performance-wise going with 1 or 2 120GBish SSDs for drive space. It costs more, but for the same space (roughly) you get really great performance.

I just wish I’d bought more 2TB HDs than I did. $79 for one 6 months ago. $200+ now.

I could have got rich. Jeez.

Anonymous

I just had a 1 year old Intel SSD fail.
So reliability, one of the key reasons I was willing to spend the premium, is out the window.
As much as I like the speed of SSD, its probably too early for primetime.

Mike Pisarczyk

One other MAJOR factor that I don’t see people mentioning: system startup. No matter how stable my system is, I’m regularly restarting for one thing or another. The restarts after installing my 160 GB Intel SSD are fast and painless.

160 GB seems to be the right balance. I have a Win 7 system and still struggled with getting the OS and data (on the spinner) set up perfectly. I think it is better now than it was 2 years ago. Regardless, with 160 GB, I’ve got plenty of room for the OS plus stuff that wants to force itself on the same drive letter as the OS.

I won’t ever go back. SSDs for me!

Tobyn Smith

Spinning hard drive transfer speeds are ALWAYS a limiting factor in any reasonably-new computer. Even with my (relatively old) Core 2 Duo E8400, by far and away the slowest thing on my system is my HD.

That being said, I agree that for many folks who don’t NEED the snappy performance that an SSD will bring to the whole system, it’s not worth the money at the moment. For me, cutting boot times, load times, and improving the Windows interface speed will be WELL worth it.

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2015 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.